Mystery Forge
by David Leff
The forest holds its secrets. Trees grow, leaves and other detritus accumulate, and they draw a curtain over even the most industrious, permanent seeming human activities. Memory is fragile, and places like the Brown Brook sawmill might be lost forever if not for old maps. Even so, casual visitors still might not find it without knowing the telltale signs. Such was the case with a spot called “Old Forge,” which Russell Russ found marked on a map that had been lost for years among voluminous files. A forge is a blacksmith’s shop where cast iron from a blast furnace is processed into wrought iron by repeated heating and hammering, and then turned into useful objects from hinges to horseshoes.
Agile and rangy, Russell is a master of map and compass, able to locate the most obscure boundary markers. He can find stone piles or an iron pin lost for decades, barbed wire strands on the rotting stump of an ancient witness trees mentioned in nineteenth century deeds. His father, Darrell, was Ted Childs’ forester from the early 1950s to the start of the 1990s, and Russell grew up around the mountain, also becoming a forester. He has an instinctual sense of the landscape, as if it were a genetic inheritance.
With a combination of maps and intuitive knowledge, Russell and forest manager Jody Bronson found the forge after bushwhacking a few miles and nosed around the spot marked on the old sketch. Bronson is a bearded bear of a man, a forester who worked at GMF from 1976 to 2022, learning from Ted Childs and Darrell Russ, and over the years taking an understanding of this place to yet a new level. His house is on the slope of Canaan Mountain, at the southwest boundary of GMF, and he knows the forest so well that he is not so much ever in the forest as he is of the forest. His father and grandfather were ardent conservationists, acquiring state forest and parkland, fighting wildfires, establishing trails. Protecting and living with the natural world is in his blood.
On an unusually warm and foggy mid-October morning that oozed a slight drizzle, Russell, Ralph, Jody and I set out for the recently rediscovered forge with forest ecologist and former GMF board member Charlie Canham. Soft spoken and professorial, no scientist has conducted more field studies at GMF than Charlie and his colleagues—resulting in over 40 peer-reviewed publications between 1993 and 2000, on everything from nutrient cycling to seed dispersal
From the East Gate near the forestry office, we drove the Camp Road and took Number 4 Trail (a moniker earned as a nineteenth century charcoal road), parking just past the Crissey Trail, a footpath running westerly to Chattleton Road and easterly back to our starting point. Dampened hemlock and laurel glistened darkly among the flaming deciduous branches, and the mist seemed to smooth out the rugged countryside that faded with distance.
Venturing into the woods from the east side of the road, we found ourselves on uneven ground among beech, oak, maple and hemlock. Leaves were falling, and many branches above were already bare. But the understory, especially small beeches, were still full of leaves ranging from yellow to taupe, to the color of tanned leather or, at times, a dull orange. They grew in clusters and stood out against the somber hemlocks, like autumn’s lanterns.
We passed mossy ledges, found clusters of moose scat piled like dark brown ball bearings, and skirted a swamp dotted with pointy, shaggy spruce. Winterberry, kind of holly with bright red berries, was common. Mountain laurel grew in dense thickets.
Turning south, we made our way through a valley between the Bishop’s Cave cliffs and distant Crissey Ridge, following a small stream connecting a series of wetlands. Soon we came to a red spruce swamp, fairly open with tussocks of grasses and tangles of shrubs. Some of the trees were unusually large, and Jody estimated one near the edge at about 85 or 90 feet tall with a trunk 20 inches dbh (diameter at breast height).
“Nineteenth century Adirondack boat builders prized red spruce roots for a curvature that made excellent ribs,” Charlie said. An expert woodworker and crafter of small boats, he could not only see the trees standing in front of us, but the hue and grain of wood that might become a shiplap plank, a table, or footstool.
Just beyond the swamp, was a massive glacial boulder perched on other rocks in such a way as to create a passage beneath it that a person could crawl through. A full-grown hemlock had picturesquely fallen on it, and a pole-sized white pine grew out of a narrow crevice near the top, standing like a ship’s mast. The great rock had a somewhat hirsute quality with a spotty covering of lichen, leathery liverwort, and polypody ferns. Surrounding rocks were adorned with plush moss, soft like pillows. We looked at the boulder from all angles, conjuring various likenesses—a hippo, the prow of a ship.
“You’ve got to wonder where this thing came from, how far it traveled in the belly of the ice,” Charlie said as he took off his glasses and wiped the lenses. “Standing here now, the notion of a mile-thick frozen mass slowly oozing down from the north, and powerful enough to carry something this size, seems almost crazy.” Momentarily, we stood in silent awe. A light breeze rippled through the tree canopy.
“Where else would you find four grown men who would spend a full 15 minutes marveling over a big rock,” Ralph said at last, shaking his head. We laughed but shared a little-boy sense of wonder that was a matter of pride and drew us closer together. It wasn’t the last time that day, or on others, that we communed over glacial handiwork.
Not long after, we encountered another red spruce swamp, this one more open and less wet. A few twisted, misshapen, and broken black gum trees grew among the conifers. They looked like sylvan survivors of a battlefield, reminded me of pictures of Gettysburg after the shooting stopped.
“They don’t grow very big and they look kind if scraggly, but these Nyssa may be some of the oldest trees in the forest,” Jody explained, using the Latin name for the genus. “The heartwood tends to rot from a fairly young age, and lumbermen don’t want a hollow tree. The wood is brittle, and the trunks and limbs tend to snap off in high winds rather than topple over and die.”
“Right under the bark, are lots of dormant epicormic buds.” Charlie said. “They sprout into new branches when sunlight hits them.”
“Looks like something scary from an enchanted fairytale forest,” I said.
“They may not be pretty,” Ralph added, “but they’re survivors, tell stories of past storms.”
Skirting the swamp, we spotted a man in a blue jacket holding a camera, straight gray hair visible below a floppy hat. Tom Blagden, an award-winning nature photographer who has captured the country’s beauty from the Grand Canyon to Acadia National Park, had spent the morning unsuccessfully looking for moose. A native of the area, he frequented GMF for its wildness, capturing images he could find nowhere else nearby.
“Looking for moose and you found us,” Jody said with a broad grin. “I hope you’re not too disappointed.”
“You don’t see me snapping pictures do you,” Tom quipped. Our laughter probably didn’t draw moose any closer.
We walked through hemlock, beech and some red oak along the swamp’s edge, following the slow, winding outlet stream as it made its way around rocks and along uneven ground among black cherry and yellow and black birch that grew alongside more hemlock and beech. We’d step into amber deciduous light and then into conifer gloaming and back again. A phragmites swamp still had some green reeds, and the Crissey Ridge behind it in the distance was a floral arrangement of fall color.
The woods echoed with conversation and laughter as we walked. We talked about our families and work, but mostly about acorns, wind dispersion of pine pollen, the reproductive success of birch catkins and maple samaras. Later, my wife asked what we talked about. “What a bunch of tree nerds,” she sighed, “gabbing about the sex life of trees.” I took it as a high compliment.
Following a long, low outcrop of mossy ledge dotted with pockets of soft sphagnum, we at last arrived the impoundment that once furnished the forge’s waterpower. A droughty period had lefty the pond low, with wide, muddy margins which were unavoidable in spots. Our footsteps sank a few inches in the ooze, yielding a squishy sucking sound and prints that would last until the water rose again. A few large rocks punctuated the shore, along with silvered standing deadwood and grassy tussocks. Near the outlet, was a conical pile of sticks—an old beaver lodge.
Just below a breached beaver dam, we found a small, tree-shaded glade where the pond’s water tumbled over a two-foot-high rock shelf, foaming and singing as it fell into a pool before becoming a stream speeding into the woods. Here was the forge site. It was an inviting spot with its running water and dappled sunlight, a good place to kick back and have lunch. We lay down our packs, found logs or rocks to sit on, and pulled out brown bags and water bottles. The air was spiced with moisture and newly fallen leaves that had a slightly nutty scent, reminding me of jumping into piles as a kid.
The natural dam of ledge appeared to have been augmented once by earth and stone, creating a larger body of water behind it. But like the beaver dam, it had been broken by decades of powerful freshets.
The pool was clear, with a pebbly bottom, and water exited via a natural channel in the ledge. Four fieldstone piers stood along the east bank where likely there had been a building leaning over the stream. A large rectangular stone and other seemingly purposeful arrangements of rock were clearly not the work of the glacier or other natural forces. Chunks of firebrick were strewn in the water, with a few on the bank. Hard to read after perhaps a century-and-a-half of weathering, they were imprinted: “Newton, Albany, New York.” Russell’s internet search for information on the company and its bricks after he and Jody made their first visit proved fruitless.
“Based on what I know about old-time blacksmith’s shops,” Jody began “I imagine this one was probably a small, single-room log shed with a dirt floor. Maybe there was a window, but maybe not. The firebrick is from the forge, which burned charcoal and was likely vented through a chimney. Coals were blown red hot with a bellows driven by a small waterwheel at the dam.”
“Must have looked and sounded like a dragon breathing,” I said.
Charlie pointed his half-eaten sandwich at me. “A poetic way of looking, for sure, but I doubt the blacksmith would have thought of it that way.”
“You never know,” Russell chimed in, “there’s Dragon Swamp not far to the south of us. I think some of the early owners wanted to scare folks away with tales of man-eating dragons. These days, it’s mostly called Wildcat Swamp.”
“Well, that’s an improvement from a real estate marketing viewpoint, I suppose.” We laughed.
“Heated metal was retrieved from the fire with tongs,” Jody continued, “and hammered into shape on an anvil. Blacksmiths also used forms, chisels, and wedges—probably ones they made themselves. Along the wall and in corners there were probably piles of charcoal and scrap. Every inch of space was used.”
“From what I’ve read,” Charlie said, “they rarely wore gloves because they wanted to feel the metal. Amazing. But, a cowhide apron from the waist to below the knees was practically universal”
“Who’s forge, was it?” Ralph asked. All eyes turned to Russell, who had long been a bloodhound when it came to tracking down obscure history in old GMF flies. His 1978 eighth grade report on the history of this part of the forest still served as an excellent reference. But Russell just shrugged.
“I’ve looked through old deeds, maps, surveys and other documents without luck. Exactly when the site was active, and what products they made for whom remains a mystery.”
Jody led me to a laurel thicket on a slight rise just above the pool, and showed me some heavy, rusted lengths of iron strapping, some pieces curved. He and Russell had discovered them on their first visit. They were thick and stiff, the flat ones reminding me of vehicle springs. It looked as if they might have been able to be linked. What they were used for, was unknown.
This little oasis in the woods was so peaceful that despite contrary evidence it was hard to believe it had once been a small industrial site, a place of fire, hammering, active human hands and sweat. Technology had its day here, but this land could only sustain it so far. In time, the scale of industry outgrew this place. Inventions of human imagination became too great to be contained here. But energy resided in these woods beyond what nature alone could offer. So, I listened to the musical splash of running water, the one constant in this spot since the glacier retreated.
